


Within A Dark Wood

by Harp_of_Gold



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Chronic Pain, First Kiss, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Scientist and Inventor Fëanor, Years of the Trees, brief discussion of torture, long conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29153457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harp_of_Gold/pseuds/Harp_of_Gold
Summary: Fëanor meets a tall, dark Vala in the wilds of Valinor.
Relationships: Fëanor | Curufinwë/Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor, background Melkor/Mairon
Comments: 9
Kudos: 38
Collections: 2021 My Slashy Valentine





	Within A Dark Wood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lemurious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemurious/gifts).



Fëanáro breathed in deeply, shaking off the weariness of his journey and the constricting feel of the city that still clung to him. After the last fight with his father, he'd ridden hard across Valinor, ostensibly on an already-planned research venture, but in truth because only in the wilds could he feel at home in his own skin anymore. The cities always drew him back, inexorably—that’s where the libraries were, the colleges of masters in every art, debates and lectures and daily news of discoveries and advances that he hungered to know. But Tirion and Valmar both were over-bright and over-loud, full of distractions impinging on his attention and worse, people watching and judging his every move. They grated on him unbearably, and that was before considering the headache that was his family.

He sighed and pulled off his shoes, tucking them into his saddlebag and walking barefoot on the mossy earth. Here at least he didn't have to pretend to be the affable, pleasantly charming prince for everyone who wanted a piece of him. The quiet forest and meadows and the stars overhead asked nothing, but offered him their secrets. He adjusted the bundle of gently glowing garnets and rubies that hung from his belt to get a bit more light. The farther along the edges of Aman he roamed, the less light from the Trees could interfere in his experiments. Red light was best for his purposes, he'd found; it kept his eyes tuned to the darkness and didn't dim his view of the stars. 

Something flickered in the periphery of his vision, and Fëanáro feigned not to see. He wasn't sure if it was some wild creature or an equally wary Maia, but he didn't want to scare them away. An Elda would have greeted him by now. He wandered along, sinking his toes in the soft, thick, velvety moss and looking up at the glittering masses of stars, the Treelight only a golden glow that filtered faintly through the woods, but he listened intently. His shadow was following. Careful not to turn his head, Fëanáro slowed.

“Forgive me if I've stumbled upon your home,” he said, just loud enough for the ears of the Maia. He could feel their presence seeping around him, cool and secretive and complex, whispering of things creeping in the dark, branching and spreading and reaching.

“I have no home. It is far away, and I cannot return.” The voice was deep and mournful and mellifluous, and Fëanáro shivered at its beauty.

“I have food and wine, if you'll be my guest and share them.” Courtesy was important when dealing with Maiar, especially those who rarely interacted with the Eldar, and offering hospitality was usually a sure way to win their goodwill.

“No one has invited me to their table in a long time.”

“Well, I do. Such as it is.”

A dark shape detached itself from the edge of the trees. The Maia took the form of a tall nér, robed simply in black, with long, flowing black hair, pale skin, and eyes as deep as night that glinted strangely. Fëanáro had seen him once before, from a distance, standing with his head bowed behind his brother in Manwë’s court.

“You—you’re the Dark Vala. The one who was imprisoned. Lord Melkor.” He winced at his own fumbling address and dropped into a bow. His heart was beating fast, and he wasn't certain if it was in fear or excitement. Melkor caught his chin and lifted it with a long, elegant finger—when had he stepped so close?! 

“Ungracious, to remind your guest of what he'd rather forget.” Fëanáro’s blood froze, but then he realized a small smile was quirking the Vala's lips. 

_Aye, as a panther might smile while it toys with its prey._ He’d committed to his course, and now he had to play it out. He silently vowed to step with more care. “Then it's doubly my duty to give you better cheer.” 

Spreading a blanket on the ground against the damp, he laid out fruit, bread and cheese, a skin of wine. He broke bread and offered a piece to Melkor along with the wine. “What brings a little Noldo so far into the wilds?” Melkor asked as he took a drink and passed it back. “Only those few who miss the stars wander here, and they stay far from my path.”

“I come here to study light,” Fëanáro answered. “I'm a smith—a jewelsmith more than anything—and I’m looking for better ways to capture light inside gemstones. There’s different qualities to the light of each Tree, but the starlight is different and older than both, and I want to understand everything about it; I want to know how each type interacts with different gems, and how color affects it, and how best to work with it, and I believe we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible; I think I can create gemstones larger and more perfect than anything we find in the earth; it's just a matter of building the right furnace…” He caught himself and trailed off. Only his closest friends among Tirion’s jewelsmiths cared to listen to him once he got started on his favorite topic; he’d long since learned that the polite exchanges at court about one’s latest artistic endeavors did not encompass dragging people to the nearest wall and covering it in whatever figures were currently spilling from his head; it made them uncomfortable. _He_ made them uncomfortable.

But Melkor was leaning forward with _interest_ in his eyes, and how could it be that Fëanáro had anything to interest a Vala? “I may have some ideas for you on the furnace. But first, I too have a special fascination with light. Have you ever experimented with concave facets?”

The next hours flowed by like time had become meaningless, filled with breathless talk of refraction indexes, faceting angles, the alchemical makeup of stones, the most useful modes for songs to bind light. Finally Melkor paused and reached for a slice of candied orange from their forgotten spread. “It must be so different where you came from,” Fëanáro said into the moment of silence. “Without the Trees for light.”

“Perhaps you've been denied the knowledge, but light was not always restricted to those who were bound within the little circle of the Valar and their trees.”

Fëanáro tensed slightly. He had no great love for the Valar after what they'd done to his mother, but he knew better than to trust the one who’d been their enemy, however fair he seemed. “I know of the Great Lamps. Aulë’s Maiar still sing to lament their breaking.”

“I speak of before the Lamps, child. When rivers of light ran freely through the sky, dancing and shimmering and dripping rainbows of shining dew for anyone to behold. There was light and shadow and dusk, intermingled and moving and ever-shifting, never twice the same but flowing throughout all the world, unconstrained.”

“That sounds beautiful. Why build the Lamps, then?”

“They thought light should be regular. Controlled. Made to be the same, all the time, unchanging and perfect. Driving out all night. They gathered it all up into two vessels, where only they could say what would become of it.”

Fëanáro wrinkled his nose. He loved the light of the Trees, but what he loved best were the moments when it softened and shifted, the quality of light slowly fading from gold to silver, and even so, he grew weary of their unceasing brightness at times and found himself longing for rainy days or his beloved far-off corners where he could walk in still darkness lit only by the stars until he desired nothing more than to see the Trees again. “Is that why you broke them?”

Melkor’s voice was soft. “It wasn’t the right shape of things. They always want to get rid of the awkward places, make everything straight and neat and symmetrical, but the world doesn’t work that way, and they would never listen when I told them. So yes, I did what I needed to. But the gloaming days were done, and what had been could not be again.”

“And now all the light is here, and Middle-earth has none.” Fëanáro thought of this more than perhaps he should; he got strange looks when he spoke of traveling to the old lands they’d left behind, but he couldn’t abandon the thought of it and all the wonders he might find there.

“Now all the light is here.”

“I’d like to go to Middle-earth someday. I’d like to make gems so bright they can bear the Trees’ light back for all to see…”

“A fine ambition.” Melkor’s air was more sorrowful than Fëanáro would have imagined, and he almost asked why, but decided he’d pressed his luck enough. “I’m sure you’re weary after your ride.”

It was clearly a dismissal, but Fëanáro’s interest was piqued now, and he didn’t want to let go. “May we talk more later?”

“I have a few days’ sufferance to wander here before I must perforce return. Such was I granted when I begged leave to see the stars again.”

“I’ll be here for several days too, taking measurements. I’d like to enjoy more of your company.”

The piercing look Melkor gave him made him think he hadn’t heard those words often. “I’d like that. Sleep well, little prince.”

*

When Fëanáro woke to the dim, far-off remnants of the Mingling, he was immediately aware of eyes upon him. Melkor sat in the low branches of a tree, watching. Strange mushrooms had erupted from the tree’s trunk, glossy lacquered brackets that marched upwards like bloody stairsteps, and more rose in ghostly white circles from the ground near his feet. Fëanáro remembered the tales of places touched by Melkor become rotting swamps full of pale, flickering lights that would lead stray Elves to their deaths, and he shuddered, but there was a lingering exhilaration to it as well. Melkor was like no one else, and he knew what no one else could tell, and perhaps he was a danger, but Fëanáro would brave danger to discover him.

He rose from the bower of green branches he’d woven for himself, sharply aware of his silent audience, and he refreshed himself and checked on his horse, then began unpacking the instruments he’d brought to map the positions of the stars and record their brightness and colors. After a while, Melkor joined him, his silky hair draped like a dark mantle about his shoulders. Fëanáro bit his lip and tried to ignore the tantalizing distraction. 

“You’re making your own star-charts? Are those not to be found in the storied halls of Tirion?”

“Plenty,” Fëanáro scoffed. “And other jewelsmiths may rely on them if they please. They might even stumble upon the more accurate ones. Though none that will show everything I’m recording.”

Mirth filled Melkor’s voice. “You trust more to your own work than to anyone else’s, then?”

Fëanáro looked up from his sextant, unsure if he was being mocked. “Yes.”

“That sounds lonely.”

“It is. But it’s the only way to be certain I have the best information and materials at every stage of my process. And I will be the best.” He realized too late he was boasting in the face of a Vala, but Melkor didn’t seem fazed. If anything, that hint of a smirk looked… _pleased._

“Don’t you ever wish there was someone you could rely on to check your work? To carry it out exactly as you desire? Even just to be able to talk it through and have someone understand?”

Fëanáro studied him. “I’m not sure we’re talking about me anymore.”

Melkor smiled softly, but it was a sad smile. “There’s someone I miss very much, and I find myself a little lost without him.”

Fëanáro felt a fierce stab of disappointment that he couldn't quite explain to himself, but he did his best to hide it. “It must be hard to be parted so long.”

“Yes. He’s dear to me. You remind me of him, a little. That burning desire to have everything perfect. I think perhaps you could understand me too. Perhaps we could understand each other.”

“That would be a fair thing indeed. No one else does.”

“No one at all? The Noldor are supposed to be clever folk. Not even among your esteemed family?”

Fëanáro snorted. “Least of all my family. They are content to be surrounded by beauty and learning, but their faces go blank and they can only smile and nod when I start explaining my work; they can’t see the possibilities just beneath the surface of everything I touch; they never wake in the middle of their rest to scribble down what they imagined in their dreams. And that’s before we even get to the real problems.” He sighed and sat down beside Melkor. “My mother would have understood. She was an artist like me. The most brilliant embroiderer this world’s ever known. But she’s gone. Dead.”

“It’s little comfort, I know, but you’ll see her someday. Mandos doesn’t hold Elvish fëar forever.”

“That’s just the thing, though. I won’t. She can’t ever come back, because my selfish father decided he had to have a new wife, and the Valar—they decided that a marriage can only have two living people in it, and so a new wife for Father meant my mother could never live again.”

“How cruel.” He sounded utterly sincere, and Fëanáro glanced up in surprise. Usually when he talked about it there was much sympathy for his father’s loneliness, and never any criticism of the Valar. “How pointlessly cruel and arbitrary.”

“I think so,” Fëanáro whispered. He rarely ventured to voice those feelings at all, but he felt safe speaking of them to Melkor. It wasn’t like he could have much love for the Valar and their judgments. “They say she agreed to it. To give her place to Lady Indis. But what kind of choice is that, really? Do you want to be the one to say, no, I don’t know when I’ll be ready to return, but you have to wait for me forever? What would people say of her? That’s a cruel burden to lay on someone you love, and he should never have put her in that position in the first place. He should have taken it on himself to be loyal to the family he already had. _He_ should have made that sacrifice, if someone had to do it. What’s a new spouse to warm your bed next to a life? What kind of horrid trade is that?!” Tears had sprung to his eyes, and he dashed them away.

Melkor held out a hand, uncertainly, as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it. Fëanáro put his hand in Melkor’s, and he clasped it, bringing his other to enclose it, holding it at a little distance and giving it an awkward squeeze. All Fëanáro could think of for a long moment was the fact that they were touching, and that he couldn't allow himself to want more. They were all wrong, those who decried Melkor without even knowing him. There was kindness in him, and it was being granted to Fëanáro. “I think a judgment is poor that brings such grief upon all who are involved.”

“You were there,” Fëanáro pleaded, jolted back to the memories of which they spoke. “Did you…would you ever have seen my mother? Míriel was her name. Can you tell me anything, anything at all?”

“No.” Melkor worried at Fëanáro’s fingertips with his thumb. “I was alone in that place. I saw no others.”

“I’m sorry,” Fëanáro quickly offered. “I know you didn’t want to think of it.”

“I cannot blame you for asking after her.”

Fëanáro hugged his knees to his chest and tried to pull himself together. He couldn't let the vast aching emptiness that opened within him at the thought of his mother swallow him. He should get back to his work; the stars had progressed while they spoke, and he'd have to readjust his whole array. But he realized the Vala was silently weeping. “I'm sorry,” Fëanáro murmured again, feeling helpless and out of his depth. What could he do to comfort a being who was supposed to be powerful beyond his imagining, who understood the deep secrets of fate, who had existed before time itself? 

“The memory of that place lies heavy on my heart.” Melkor spoke quietly and hoarsely, each word seeming begrudged and yet dragged forth as if it demanded to be said. “I feel as though its walls enclose me yet, and the smell of the earth and the moss beneath my feet and the play of the wind on my face isn't always enough to convince me I'm not there. That my own little brother could have broken me so thoroughly…” He shook his head.

“Little brothers are the worst,” Fëanáro declared. “Mine get away with anything. Once, when I was still a child, I’d been working on this intricate necklace woven of beads, and I left it—in my own room, mind—for a few minutes to get something to eat, and when I came back, little Nolofinwë had plucked it apart and spilled my beads all over the floor. _Days_ of work lost. And you know who got in trouble for it? Not perfect Nolofinwë! No, it was all ‘Fëanáro, you mustn't leave your things where the little ones can find them,’ and ‘Fëanáro, what if he’d grabbed a sharp tool and _hurt himself?!’_ He wasn't even that small anymore. How should I have known he’d come barging into my room? My sister Findis certainly never did!” He glanced up and saw to his relief that Melkor’s bleak look had softened.

“Typical, blaming everything that goes wrong on the elder. I could not tell you how many beautifully jagged mountains I had only just wrought my brother had to ruin, determined to wear them down into something he liked, all smooth and round.”

“Brothers. No respect for art.” 

Melkor broke into laughter at that, real, honest laughter, and Fëanáro was proud of himself. “Tell me more of your struggles with this Nolofinwë.”

Fëanáro obliged, dredging up every childhood frustration that he thought he could make amusing, and if he sidled closer as he spoke, until the slightest shift would press him into Melkor's side, the Vala didn't seem to mind. At last he drew up his courage and, as casually as he could manage, leaned his head against Melkor's shoulder. Melkor tensed, but when Fëanáro went on with his story as if nothing had changed, he slowly put an arm around him and held him there. It felt like the first time he'd lured a wild animal to eat from his hands, a rush of victory tinged with wonder, and Fëanáro tried to shut from his mind the knowledge that someone far away was waiting for Melkor to come home. 

*

“Are they hurting?” Fëanáro asked. He’d seen the scars circling Melkor’s wrists a few times when his sleeves rode up, though he tried to keep them hidden. Today he’d stopped to rub at them between every little phial they'd filled with samples of starlight, though from his scowl it didn’t seem to ease his pain.

“You tell me, since your eyes are so keen.”

“I have some ointment with me that might help, if you’ll let me try.” He’d packed it to use on blisters and saddle sores, but if Melkor was troubled so, perhaps he’d find even a little relief better than nothing.

Melkor scowled harder, but Fëanáro was already digging it out of his saddlebags, and when he opened the jar and held out his hand for Melkor’s, the Vala curled his lip and allowed Fëanáro to roll his sleeve up. “Fine.” 

Up close the scars looked worse, like burns or perhaps frostbite that hadn’t been treated, the skin pitted and gnarled and red. Fëanáro touched them as carefully as he could, smearing the ointment thickly, noting Melkor’s quickly concealed wince. The marks sat exactly, as far as Fëanáro could tell, where manacles did in the paintings he’d seen of Melkor being dragged from the ruins of Utumno, but he didn’t think three ages could have passed since their infliction. Not with them still so angry and painful. Surely he hadn’t been forced to wear, all that time, metal that was _burning_ him? “The Valar did this to you?” he whispered, not wanting to believe it.

“Three ages of imprisonment in gradually lightened pain.” Melkor’s gaze was far-off. “That was my sentence.”

Fëanáro caught his breath as the implications became clear. He hadn’t thought about what those terms really meant before. People passed around tales of the Dark Vala’s punishment, of justice being served, of how Manwë had taken pity on him at last, but what kind of pity was it when Manwë had caused his misery to begin with? “They tortured you.”

“That is generally the word for willfully putting another to pain, yes.”

 _A word we wouldn't have if not for you,_ Fëanáro thought. _Not if the stories are true._ He didn't speak it aloud. Melkor had suffered, and whatever he had done, Fëanáro didn't see how injuring him would fix it. He wondered what other wounds were lurking where he couldn’t see. Wasn’t the chain Angainor supposed to have been wrapped around him? That hardly bore imagining.

“If you’re going to laugh now at how the Mighty is brought low, you can get it over with, and we’ll part ways.”

“No!” His silence must have stretched too long. “I would never—there’s no shame in being hurt. The shame is on the ones who did this.” He pressed the jar into Melkor’s hands. “Here. If it’s helping any, keep the rest and use it.”

Melkor laughed. “Stubborn child.” He looked down at where Fëanáro still cradled his hands and raised one to Fëanáro’s face, cupping his cheek and stroking it thoughtfully with his thumb. “You know, there aren’t many I allow to touch me so freely.”

“Should I not?” Melkor’s palm against his cheek was doing strange things to him. He felt breathless and hot, and the idea that only for him would the Dark Vala permit this closeness, this vulnerability, left him dizzy. Melkor bent and brushed his lips against Fëanáro’s. He whimpered and surged up, meeting Melkor in a kiss that seemed to go on and on. “I’m sorry,” he babbled when he realized what he’d done. “You have your beloved waiting for you. I shouldn’t have—” 

Melkor kissed him again, quick but firm. “He knows that he is mine, and he would begrudge me no company or pleasure that might cheer me in his absence. We are not bound by the petty rules that have brought you so much grief.”

Fëanáro took a moment to picture that other world where Míriel could have rejoined his father and welcomed Indis, too. He wondered how much less he would have resented his siblings, his father. How much happier they might have been. “I would not bring any grief between you. It is sorrow enough to be parted from the ones you long for. I think you must know it as well as I.”

“Ai, it seeps into you. It works itself into your bones and leaves a shadow on your spirit, and I’m not sure it ever fades away. I hope these days will pass, and yet I cannot imagine them truly leaving me.”

“Even when you have him once more?”

“If I ever have that good fortune, what I have suffered will not then cease to have been.”

Fëanáro nodded and reached up himself, daring to slip a hand into Melkor’s hair and run its shimmering dark length through his fingers. “People say I should let it go. Move on. Forget her and my grief and live a merry life in merry, perfect Aman, where it is a lie that no sorrows exist.”

“They are wrong, my sweet little smith. You should never forget.” He caught Fëanáro's hand and brought his fingertips to his lips. “Has anyone ever told you what beautiful hands you have?”

“They're rough.” 

“They're strong. The hands of one who creates what he wants. I’d hate to see that fire dimmed because you were left to bear your sorrow in silence.”

“Kiss me again.”

Melkor’s mouth was hot and biting and fierce, and Fëanáro was drunk with it, letting Melkor’s lips and his tongue chase away the bitterness of his thoughts. He clutched Melkor’s arms, and Melkor pulled him closer, enfolding Fëanáro in lovely soft shadow until he felt he could lose himself in the depths of starry night mirrored in his eyes. “I don’t want this to end,” he whispered.

“I'm not going to turn you away.”

“I want to show you my forge, and to hear everything you can tell me. I want—” He pressed himself close, let his hands wander down Melkor’s body. “I want _you.”_

Melkor tipped his chin up. "Do you indeed?" He studied Fëanáro intently, as if his gaze could rend him and bare his heart, and his smile grew slowly sharper. "I want to watch you become the best. I want to see what you’ll make.”

**Author's Note:**

> Elvish (Quenya) terms used:  
> nér=male Elf  
> fëar=plural of fëa=spirit/soul


End file.
